Good morning Valley View. It’s great to be together. We’re kicking off a new series this week. We wrapped up the Book of Jonah last week. We had been in it to start out the year and now we’re doing something different. Normally we work through a book of the Bible at a time, slowly work through it, get a sense for an entire book of the Bible. We’re going to take a break from that and do a series around the idea of the connection between knowing God, knowing him, knowing his attributes, knowing his character, his person knowing him, and the connection between that and loving him. As we grow in knowledge of him, our love for him should grow. I remember a friend of mine sharing with me he was working in ministry with a guy. He was kind of serving as a ministry assistant to this guy, and I was about to move into that role, and he said to me, this is the first guy in my life that as I got to know him better, my respect for him went up. He said before that every guy, every man that I got to know who was in any kind of position of authority, if I got to know him a little better, I saw, oh, oh, they got a lot of problems. Their respect for him went down. But this guy, he said, my respect for him has has gone up. My knowledge of him increased my appreciation for him. It ultimately increased my love for him. And when we think about God, we as we grow in understanding of who he is, our love for him should grow. In fact, this verse it’s listed in your notes Mark 12:30 – 31. It’s the greatest first and greatest commandment, first greatest commandment, second greatest commandment. Jesus identifies them this way love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we see there the connection. The more we know about God, the more we understand who he truly is, the more our love for him will grow, should grow, and as a result, the more our love for others should grow. So we’re going to take the next couple of months and work through a number of topics about who God is his character, his person, his being, his work, his attributes, what that means for us. We’re going to look at these over the course of a number of weeks, so that we can grow in our knowledge of who God is as a result, growing our love for him as a result, growing our love for others. There’s a direct connection between all of these. Now, the fancy word for all of this you may have heard used in churches the word theology. And that word just in its bare root essence of meaning. And it’s in your notes here. I’ve broken it into two parts Theos and Logos. Theos is the Greek word for God. You hear it in the name Theodore. God’s gift is what that name means at its essence, God and gift. Theodore. The word logos is the word or you hear it in our English word logic, right? Something to study, something to understand. Reason. We use these words. When you put them together, you get this idea of theology being just ideas about God. Thoughts about God, the study of God. We use it. You run across it all the time in phrases like, words like biology. It’s the study. Bio is life. It’s the study of living things, geology, the study of the earth. So these are words that when you put them together, you understand it’s not something just highfalutin and fancy. Some people hear the word theology and they go, oh, wait a second, I don’t I don’t have any fancy degrees. I don’t have any letters behind my name. I don’t I don’t know that I can go there. Don’t, you know, don’t intimidate me with your fancy words. Well, now look, theology and. Well. And then the other reaction for some is I don’t I don’t want to get bogged down. And I remember one guy saying this to me, I don’t care about doctrine and theology. I don’t care about all that. Don’t. To get bogged down in that. I just want to know Jesus. I just want to love Jesus. And by the way, I appreciate that sentiment, right? Because there are a lot of people who get bogged down in unnecessary arguments and things that don’t matter. I know that’s kind of what he meant by that, but when you say, I just want to love Jesus, you’re already talking about theology, because who is Jesus? How do you know who he is? Where do you find that information? And there are a lot of arguments in the history of the church about a lot of those things. And those are important things to wrestle with to help guide us in this series. There’s a book we’ve offered out in the lobby. It’ll be available after the service as well. It’s called You Are a Theologian, and I love that title and the book. It’s not mandatory. You don’t have to buy it, but it’s going to help supplement your study along the way. And we’re following basically the chapter titles as we unpack each topic. I love that title, though. You are a theologian and here’s why we can say that case. We can say every one of us is a theologian because every one of us has thoughts about God. Even if you think he doesn’t exist, that’s a thought about God. You have a view of God. You have beliefs about God, whether it’s fancy or sophisticated or not. You you are a theologian at some level. We looked at Jonah. Jonah had thoughts about God. I mean, Jonah thought that God should behave in a certain way. And when God didn’t act the way, according to Jonah’s image of God, Jonah got angry. And I think we’ve all wrestled with that at times. This is the God I’ve shaped up in my mind. This is how I think he should act. And when he doesn’t act that way, we’ve got to go back to Scripture and say, I did my did I misunderstand who he is? Where did I build that image of him from? So this week we’re going to look at eight ideas, eight ways to think about God. In fact, we’re going to use this phrase theology shapes us. That’ll be an acronym. We’ll unpack each of those letters. Theology shapes us. How we think about God shapes us. It’s probably the most important thing you think is what you think about God. It shapes every aspect of your life. I’m going to share eight ideas, eight ways that as I’ve studied the Bible over the years, these are ideas about the Bible, about God that have helped me in terms of understanding how it fits together, how it all works together, how I should view God, how I can understand who he is. As I look at Scripture. And so eight ways we’re going to start with the letter s. So in your notes that first letter s is the word structure. Okay. How do we understand theology. The first idea is that theology is just structure. It’s just an organizing principle around the all the information that’s in the Bible theology helps us to take. I mean, when you first get a copy of the Bible and someone puts it in your hand the first time you’ve ever seen it, you go, many people just ask me, where do I start? Do I start a page one? Should I start somewhere else? What? What’s it about? How do I make sense? What’s the most important parts? I want to make sure I get it right. There’s so much here. But theology helps us to organize the information in the Bible so that it’s accessible. So that way we can get to it so we can understand it and apply it to our lives. I’ve mentioned this a few times to people and every time I’ve done it, so I’m taking a risk here. Every time I’ve done it. The result was laughter. By the way, not the kind of laughter you want. Okay, each time I’ve shared this. And so here it goes. I’ll share it again with you. I’ll take a risk. Last year I read a book. I read it on purpose. I chose to read it. I read the entire thing. I found it utterly fascinating. It was a book about the history of the development and use of the file cabinet. Read the whole thing. And it was fascinating. And here’s what this has to do with theology. By the way, the author made the case that the file cabinet, more than anything else that had been developed up until that time, had the greatest effect on modern industrialization, on the development of the modern economy, because prior to that, probably the biggest hindrance in the growth of a business is how quickly information can flow. So if I am a business owner and I want to find a letter I wrote someone or a contract I had developed with someone or a drawing or whatever, any piece of information, I’d have to go to the one person who was in charge of all of that for for the for the business, and hoped that they could remember where they laid it down. In fact, I’ve got to bring up that first image of kind of the old version of a desk. You know, it was just cubbyholes papers, papers folded over, stuck on spears and piled up. I mean, this is what else did you do? You you hoped the guy could locate it, and if not, then you waited till they could. But with the file cabinet, anyone could go find any piece of information. Any time they wanted. They could find it quickly. The only thing that slowed him down was just the pace of walking to it and walking back. Here’s a picture of a file cabinet farm. It kind of, as I looked at it, kind of remind me of like our modern data centers. It even has kind of a precursor to that idea of information being in small packets. This is actually taken from the Belknap Building in downtown Louisville. Showed up in this book as an as an example of some of the file cabinet farms that would have been in a lot of these big businesses, because we got to be able to get our information quickly. And you experience this now. I mean, if you grew up before Google, if you wanted to find information, you had to go hunt down an encyclopedia, find it in there, maybe now you just find it on your phone. It’s quick access. Things move faster. Now. Okay, so the file cabinet basically provided a structure, provided a system for you to be able to go find the information, quickly access it, use it, utilize it. This is why structure is important. This is how structure allows for access, allows us to access information to understand how the Bible fits together. Now we can apply this idea to Scripture because this is how God acted from the very beginning. In your notes, I’ve listed Genesis chapter one from the very beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was over the face of the deep. The Spirit of God was hovering over the depths of the waters. Many people believe that the view of the waters in the ancient times was that it represented chaos disorder, and it even says the world was without form and void. So God entered into a situation where there was no form, there was void, there was chaos. And he brought order to it. He took even clay and shaped it into a human form. So God is a God of order. God brings order to chaos. And if you’ve lived a life of chaos and he brought order to your life, you know what I’m talking about. God brings order to chaos, and he calls us to do the same thing he said to Adam and Eve, go to the garden, tend it, care for it, subdue it, take the madness of just things growing wild and bring order to it. He said to Adam, go name the animals, give some order, give some structure to the animals. And I wasn’t there. I don’t have pictorial evidence, but I’m pretty sure he used a file cabinet to accomplish that. Keep everything in order. God is a God of order. First Corinthians 14 says not I’m a God of order, not a God of confusion. So he calls us to order things, to structure things, to seek to put things. And you do this even in a very simple way. When you are wondering, I wonder what the Bible says about love, and you flip to the concordance in the back, or you search on Google. What does the Bible say about love? And you get a list of verses. That’s just a first step towards trying to get an idea for what does the whole Bible say about it? Not just this one verse, but I don’t want to know how what the whole Bible says about it. What does the whole Bible say about boats or birds or whatever you’re looking for? What does it say? How does it fit together? This is the idea of approaching the Bible theologically. How does it fit together? What does the whole Bible say about it? How can I understand it better? That’s the letter S. All right. Now the the Bible shaped this letter H. Here’s the second way. It’s shapes us. Theology shapes us is the word history. You can come to the Bible knowing it is history. It is true. It did happen. But also I’m going to emphasize the story part of that word. It’s history and it’s story. So any story has a structure to it. Any story has ideas in it that build and develop, that have different scenes, different eras. And so when we come to Scripture, we come to it as a story, but also we come knowing that things develop over time. In fact, the word that’s often used is there are epics or epochs, however you, however you pronounce it, describing different eras in the history of Scripture, especially in the era of the history of redemption. How did God redeem us in different eras? I’ll give you just one example of this how this helps when you understand this, when you come to Scripture, if you turn to Leviticus chapter four, I think that’s on page 78 in the Church Bible, if you have a church Bible, Leviticus, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus is third book in the Bible, so you can find it pretty easily a few pages into the Bible, Leviticus chapter four. This would have been in the priestly sacrificial system, right in after the law was given. And here we have a situation, Leviticus chapter four. I’m going to read these couple of verses to you. We understand that they operate differently in our day and age than they did then. Leviticus 4:1, And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the people of Israel, saying, if anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord’s commandments about things not to be done, and they do any of them, if it is the appointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, then he shall offer for the sin that he committed a bull from the herd without blemish to the Lord for a sin offering, he shall bring the bull to the entrance of the tent of meeting. Before the Lord lay his hand on the head of the bull, and kill the bull before the Lord. Now let’s say in theory, that at some point during this past week, I sinned. I was just talking theoretically. Julie’s not here today. She’s not feeling good, so she might have a few things to say about that. It does happen. Let’s say we had a heated one of us. We had a heated conversation, I got upset, I got angry, I called you some names that weren’t very nice. I called you dummy or imbecile or something like that. Okay. Said some things. And now if you come to church today, you have some expectations. You’re expecting that I will come and find you and apologize, that we will reconcile with one another, that we’ll try to make things right. What you don’t expect is to come to the front door and that I will be there sacrificing a bull before you come in. Because we know this is an era that is different now. Sacrifices were a key part of the worship, a key part of what God established for how we relate to him. But that all went away when Jesus died. He’s the ultimate sacrifice. He died. In fact, he didn’t just die. That’s why he’s not still on our cross. Our cross is empty because he died and he rose again. He’s alive right? So I don’t have to drag a bull around with me everywhere I go, just in case I sin. Which does happen. His sacrifice on our behalf. We’re in a different era of his story, and that’s important to understand about Scripture. It helps us understand when we approach it well, what’s going on here? What do I do with it? It can still be complex to try to figure out what that means, but it helps us to know how to be guided by Scripture. It also helps us when we read the Bible to know that this is a story. This relates to how the gospel works. You know, if the gospel was just do this, don’t do that. If that’s what Christianity was, which is what your average non-Christian probably thinks, do this, don’t do that. That’s behave. But but the gospel is believe, not behave. Behavior flows from belief flows from love. But I don’t gain favor with God because of how good I am. No, no, no, the gospel is believe. So the Bible isn’t just a long list of do this, don’t do that, do this. It’s stories and it’s crazy stories. It’s stuff. You go, I can’t believe that’s in the Bible. There’s wars, there’s lying. There’s people doing all kinds of bad things. There’s good examples, there’s bad examples. Even his followers look like complete idiots all throughout. They even wrote that about themselves. And you go, thank you, God, for putting flesh on my faith, giving me examples. Give me stories, not just do this. Don’t do that. So we come to the Bible knowing it’s a story and that’s so powerful and helpful. That’s letter S, all right. Letter A how the Bible shapes us, how theology shapes us. This one is the word accurate. When I come to the Bible, when I come to theology, when I think about God, I want to try to be accurate. Meaning, I want to try to be fair to what Scripture says. I want to try to accurately and fairly represent God the way he represents himself. This is why I said he, that he always represents himself as he with male pronouns. When he talks about himself, he doesn’t say she. He came as a man when he came as Jesus. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why he chose to do that, I don’t know, but I want to be fair to try to represent him the way he represents himself. In Exodus three, Abraham even asked him, who should I tell you sent me that wasn’t Abraham. It was Moses. Moses said, who should I say when I go and tell them who should? What is your name? I am tell them I am sent you. Tell them the Lord, the God of the universe, the God who made all things, is I am. And so that’s who. That’s the name Abraham uses. He doesn’t make up some other name. It would be rude if I came up to you. How are you doing? We haven’t met before. What’s your name? And you said, well, my name is Tina. And I said, no. Now you look more like Tammy to me. I’m to call you Tammy. You’d be like, who is this guy? What’s his problem? No, that’s not my name. Don’t misrepresent me just to match your own feelings about who you think I am. Which we’re all tempted to do with God. To do with God. This is my God. This is the God I’ve made in my mind. This is the image of the God I have in store. This is how he should act. This is why I personally have not and won’t watch the movie The Shack. If you’ve heard of that. If you’ve watched it, look, I’m not here to beat you up. It’s okay. There’s forgiveness. God loves you. It’s okay, it’s okay. But I won’t watch it. The books all about the book came out first. A guy basically was trying to write a story. I think this starts in a good place. Most heresies do. He’s trying to write a story explaining how the Trinity was represented, trying to help them be more relatable to his children. But in that he represents God the Father as an African-American woman. And I get why. Look, I get I understand artistic expression, I understand that, I get that, yes, maybe this will feel more relatable to my children. And I know that God, when he speaks of himself, there are times when he talks about his attributes in a way that is more on the feminine side, like a mother caring for her child, but he still calls himself he. And we want to be accurate, to represent him well. And to me, that book that’s just too close to the second commandment making a graven image when you put it in film, representing God differently, then he represents himself directly, intentionally. We need to be careful that we’re not trying to shape him into our own image, but that we shape ourselves to his image. That’s how theology shapes us. We want to be accurate. We want to be careful. We want to show him the same respect that we want to be shown. Don’t just make up stuff about me. Try to represent me the way that I’m that I am. So that’s letter A that’s accurate. Now letter P plot plot. The Bible is a story and every story has a plot. It’s got a central theme, has a key idea driving it forward, which means for us we can understand. We can believe. The Bible is understandable. It does fit together. You know, one liberal and but I mean liberal theologically. I’m not talking about politics. There’s liberal and conservative theology. Conservative tries to follow Scripture, believe Scripture is true. Liberal would say, now I’ll just take from it what you want. It’s not all dependable. It’s not all authoritative. It doesn’t all fit together. But we would say no. The Bible does. It all fits together. It has a plot. It has a central storyline. We can trust that because we know God is the author. He’s the perfect author. Second Timothy, I put in your notes here. Second Timothy 3:16. All Scripture is breathed out by God is profitable for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete fit for every good work. It’s all breathed out by God. He works through human means, but he is the central author that ties it all together. And here’s the plot. And this. This idea has helped me probably as much as any other theological principle when it comes to understanding Scripture. This idea has helped me more than anything else. What is the plot of Scripture? It’s Jesus. The whole point of scripture is Jesus. Everything in the Old Testament is pointing forward to him. Everything in the Old Testament is saying, okay, the prophets we’ve had, like Jonah, have fallen short. We need a better prophet. The priests we’ve had had sinned. They’ve run away from me. We need a better priests. The kings have run from you. We need a true king. Is he going to show up? Who will it be? Prophet, priest and king. And then Jesus comes. Everything’s pointing forward to him. And then the whole New Testament is here. He is explaining who he is, explaining how the Old Testament pointed forward to him, and explaining how he’s going to come back. The whole point of Scripture is pointing to Jesus. We know that because Jesus makes that case. Jesus says that that’s the case first in John five. That’s in your notes. John 539 through 40. He says to the Pharisees, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have life. And yet it’s the scriptures that speak of me. You got so focused and enamored on studying words on a page that you missed the point. The Pharisees didn’t even see that everything they spoke to right there in front of them, Jesus was right there, the very one they had hoped for should have hope for – he’s right there. Look, to be fair to them, there’s plenty of times I look right past Jesus to try to find some other solution in life. I mean, man, there’s so many times I got a great idea about how to fix this, and it doesn’t work and eventually come around to maybe I should ask Jesus what he’s what he thinks. Maybe he’ll have some ideas. I’ve tried all my ways. Luke 24 points this out as well. Jesus, and turn there, if you would, in your Bibles. Luke 24. It’s on page 843 in a church Bible, because this is after Jesus has died. Rose again. There’s a couple guys walking on the road to Emmaus, and they’re talking about this. All that had just happened in Jerusalem. And Jesus comes up to him and says, hey, what are you talking about? What’s going on? And they’re like, where are you been? Who? Everybody is talking about this. How do you not know about this? You know that? How have you not heard about the Twin Towers? Imagine now some want to go on. What are you talking about? How are those who Jesus is saying? What he asked him? What? What are you talking about? How do you not know? And so they catch him up on everything. Of course he knows about it. They catch him up on all the information. But then he says this to them, look, in verse 24 of 25, he said to them, O foolish ones, slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? They think it’s a tragedy. They think it’s the end of the world. They’re upset and he rebukes them for not understanding this had to happen. This is a good thing. And then this next verse really ties it all together for me. And beginning with Moses, which that’s shorthand for the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So even Jesus says, the whole Bible’s about me. How did you not see it? You should have seen it. If you were looking for it, you would see that I’m the promised one. I’m the one you’re looking for. And so when you study scripture, keep that in mind. It’s all pointing toward him or showing us how he’s going to return or explaining him. That doesn’t mean that Jesus literally shows up in every passage, but every passage relates to him in some way. Every passages tells us something about him in some way. And that really helps shape our understanding of Scripture. So that’s letter P. The Bible has a plot. It has an author. It’s trustworthy. We’re going to pick up speed as we go through these last few letter E. The Bible theology shapes us because it is enough. The Bible is enough. Letter E, and this is just helpful because I think all of us have found this a struggle with this, where you’re reading scripture and you’re like, I don’t feel like I have enough information here. There’s things that I need to know about the background of the story. There’s things going on here that don’t make sense to me. And by the way, that’s true. That happens to all of us. But the Bible, the fancy biblical word, is sufficient. It’s sufficient. Everything we need to know is here. And maybe it’s not right there in that verse. Maybe you got to look some other places as well. But God gave us what he knew we needed, and it’s enough. And even if there are times where I like. In fact, I was talking to someone this week, I’d really like to know more about the conversation in the garden that was going on. Well, yeah, of course we all would. I’d love to know more about how all that went, but it’s what we have is enough. It’s sufficient to help us know him, trust him and love him. And it’s here, as Jesus said, it’s there. You should have seen it. Go look for it. Find it. Pray. Trust. It’s enough. Now letter S. This also helps us understand how the Bible fits together. Letter S he is the same God. This is so important when you’re in the Old Testament or the New Testament. He’s the same God. This is so important because I think most people who come to the Bible go, okay, we’ve got the Old Testament. God. We’ve got wrath. A God who’s angry. God who’s killing people left and right, the Old Testament God. But then somehow he he gets modernized, he grows up. Maybe he gets a little softer. He, you know, he probably went through some hard things. And in the New Testament found we have a God of love. We have God of mercy. He’s developed, he’s improved. I like that God better, I like Jesus, maybe I don’t like the other God that’s in the Old Testament, but I like him. No, no, no, no. And of course, of course, a lot of different events occur in Scripture. This goes back to the idea of redemptive history. But he’s the same God. He’s not schizophrenic. He didn’t improve. God does not change. This is why I’ve listed these two verses in Hebrews 13 eight. I’m the same yesterday as Jesus be. I’m the same yesterday, today, and forever. Malachi 3:6-I am God. I do not change. And the beautiful part of that is we can trust him. There is a consistency to him. One thing you say those young parents early on be consistent. You know you don’t want to be the schizophrenic parent that keeps your kid guessing all the time, because you never can follow up on what you said. You can’t remember what the rules are. They can’t remember. Everybody’s confused. Be consistent. You can trust he’s the same God in the Old Testament is the same God in the New Testament. Of course, the story develops. In fact, part of this is letter U. The Bible unfolds, and that’s been a real helpful word for me. The Bible unfolds, one phrase that’s used. I don’t always use it because some people have different understandings of what the phrase means, but the fancy theological phrase is progressive revelation. And look, all that means is in Genesis one one. We don’t have everything we need to know about God. We don’t understand the whole story in one verse or one chapter, or that’s why the Bible is really big. The story unfolds as it goes. God gives us more as we read, and we’ve got to study the whole thing to understand how it fits together. We understand that there’s more here than just a few verses or list of ideas. I think one of the most exciting things, especially if you’re a newer Christian, is to read through the whole Bible. I remember the first time I did this after, I feel like I really had had a reawakening in my relationship with Christ in college. Because I grew up here. I heard every Bible story, all the the well known ones. There are, I mean, very familiar with them. And I love to that. By the way, I loved getting to know the Bible. I went through the Bible drills. I had a lot of Scripture memorized. I knew where all the books of the Bible were well before the. But the first time I sat down, I said, I’m going to read through the Bible all the way through on my own. I mean, man, just even in the book of Genesis, it amazed me how these stories are all all these stories I was familiar with how they would bump up next to each other. They actually relate to one another and not just random stories. Out of nowhere that there was a flow to them. You start to see God at work moving through these different stories. He’s pointing forward to things. You know, when a father is called to sacrifice his only son with Abraham and Isaac, that’s pointing forward to a day where the heavenly Father will sacrifice his only son. You see, you start to see these ideas and patterns of how they bump up against one another, and that the story of the book unfolds and it fits together. These ideas helps shape our view of who God is. And then lastly, letter S, the reason why this is all important. Why do we do theology? Why do we seek to understand God to get to know him better? It’s because it sets us free. Letter S, the truth will set you free. We want to move towards truth. That’s John 8:32. The truth will set you free. Right before that. John 4:24 is listed. Jesus calls us to worship in spirit and truth, and so we want as much as possible to pursue truth about God, to understand him how he is, because that will set you free. Oftentimes we choose to live by lies. I’d rather believe this lie because it’s comfortable. It’s safe. I have grasped onto it. I’ve held on to it my whole life. I’d rather stay in this lie, than have to confront a new truth, then have to deal with that. To have to rethink the way I’ve thought about God. I mean, imagine how ridiculous though that would be. Just even in a relationship. I mean, Julie and I, when we first met, let’s say a month into the relationship, we’ve been getting to know each other. And she goes, hey, there’s something, something else I want to share with you. And I go, nope, no, that’s enough. Now, really? Look, I feel like I’ve gotten to know enough about you that I’m good. I don’t need any new information. I don’t want you messing up the picture I’ve already made of you in my mind. Let’s don’t mess with that. Just don’t. I don’t need to know anymore. I’m good. That’s not love. I mean, that’s a shallow relationship. That’s a relation. That’s about me. I want you to stay the way I want you to be. I don’t care enough about you to get to know who you really are. I just want you to stay in this way that I’ve pictured you in my mind. So that I feel good. The truth. If you love someone, you will want to continue to get to know them. We still go out on dates, I still go. How was your day? What are you struggling with? What’s going on? Who’s upset? You let me go. Let me go! Deal with them. How can I? How can I go? Hurt them? What’s wrong? How can we? I love you, I care about you. We don’t do that, actually. But you understand. I’m still trying to get to know we do the dates part. I don’t threaten anyone because of the conversations. We’re trying to get to know each other. Still, I there’s many times I’m like, who are you? She’s like, who are you? We’re still getting to know each other. And the same is true of God. But got to continue to get to know him, the knowledge of him, the ability to understand him. It’s infinite. It’s boundless. And your love for him can grow more and more. As much as you already may appreciate him and know him and love him, it can grow more and more and more and more and more every year. And the more you grow in loving him, the more you will love others, and the more you experience the joy and the fruit of knowing him. That’s how theology shapes us. Let’s pray. God, we thank you for your word. Thank you that you have revealed yourself to us through your Word, and we come to Your Word in humility. We come seeking to know who you are, to honor you, to accurately represent you. Because we want to worship you, not some made up idea of who you are. We want to worship you. In truth. And so would you help us over these coming weeks as we dive into some topics to help us understand you better, would you soften our hearts? I pray we would each come with a spirit of prayer, a spirit of humility, a spirit of understanding, a spirit of yearning. Would you go before us? Would you help your word to come alive within us? Would you speak to us? We love you, Jesus. Amen.